Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The cloud is coming for our school email. We have around 1,200 Groupwise users, all staff have an email address. For me that means teachers, administrators, maintenance staff, supervisory staff, etc, quite a diverse group. We have had Groupwise for years and years and now are getting ready to move to our next step, Google Mail in the Google Apps for EDU.

My boss (Hank Thiele) and I attended a Google Teacher summit at the Googleplex earlier this year (he was a panelist) and one of my favorite parts was hearing the actual project managers from Google talk about the best practice for use of their products. One major takeaway regarding Google mail was the idea that folders (used heavily in our environment) was something to be replaced, more directly by using tags, but in the end, it might be even better to simply archive EVERYTHING that comes in, relying on the Google search features to find your communications. We'll see how that flies at District 207.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Also, I just helped one of our building tech people set up 2001's Entourage for Mac to IMAP to Groupwise to pull the mail down. You just need to make sure the user understands what happens when IMAP is used on the Groupwise account.

About Me

I am currently a Google Apps Consultant for Appirio, helping schools and large enterprise companies move to the Cloud!

Before this, I was the Network Manger and Google Cloud Evangelist at Maine 207 (2006-2010) and prior to that was an IT director for various businesses and libraries. I have a MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and am a Google Certified Teacher and Administrator. I believe that freeing applications and data centers from the traditional models and roles can empower businesses, students, teachers and administrators in ways that have only begun to be imagined.